CLINTON COUNTY, KY. VETERAN TO BE HONORED POSTHUMOUSLY

After a twenty-year struggle with the United States Military Board, a Clinton County, Kentucky woman is getting what she’s fought so hard for. She will be presented with the Medal of Honor by President Donald Trump in recognition of her late husband. The ceremony will be held at the White House on Tuesday, June 26, 2018.

The journey to get the honors has been a long one.

Lt. Garlin Murl Conner left the U.S. Army as the second-most decorated soldier during World War II, earning four Silver Stars, four Bronze Stars, seven Purple Hearts and the Distinguished Service Cross for his actions during 28 straight months in combat.

But despite backing from congressmen, senators, military veterans and historians, he never received the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military distinction, awarded for life-risking acts of valor above and beyond the call of duty.

A federal judge in Kentucky previously ended his widow’s quest to see that her husband received the medal.

U.S. District Judge Thomas B. Russell, in an 11-page opinion said a technicality prevented Pauline Conner of Albany, Kentucky from continuing her campaign on behalf of her husband, who died in 1998. Russell concluded that Pauline Conner waited too long to present new evidence to the U.S. Army Board of Correction of Military Records, which rejected her bid to alter her husband’s service record.

Russell praised Conner’s “extraordinary courage and patriotic service,” but said there was nothing he could do for the family.

Conner served with the 3rd Infantry Division, which fought in France and Europe in 1945. The Army in 2001 named Eagle Base in Bosnia-Herzegovina after Conner, who died in 1998 in Clinton County, Kentucky where he lived after his fighting days and served 17 years as president of the Clinton County Farm Bureau.

Conner’s citation for the Distinguished Service Cross states that on January 24, 1945, near Houssen, France, he slipped away from a military hospital with a hip wound to rejoin his unit rather than return home to Kentucky and unreeled a telephone wire, plunged into a shallow ditch in front of the battle line and directed multiple rounds of fire for three hours as German troops continued their offensive, sometimes getting within five yards of Conner’s position.

The board first rejected Conner’s application in 1997 on its merits and turned away an appeal in June 2000, saying at the time no new evidence warranted a hearing or a new decoration despite more than a dozen letters of support for Conner.

In the years that followed, lawmakers in Kentucky, Tennessee and three other states passed resolutions backing the effort to see Conner receive the Medal of Honor. After Chilton found three eyewitness accounts to Conner’s deeds in 2006, Pauline Conner resubmitted the case to the board in 2008, two years after the statute of limitations expired.

A bipartisan group of current and former members of Congress has backed Conner’s application in the past, including retired Sen. Bob Dole, a Kansas Republican and World War II veteran; retired Sen. Wendell Ford, a Democrat from Kentucky; current Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky; and Whitfield, who represents Conner’s home town near the Tennessee line. Noted World War II historian Steven Ambrose, who died in 2002, wrote in November 2000 to support Conner’s application, saying his actions were “far above the call of duty.”

Conner’s fellow soldiers also filed affidavits crediting Conner with helping not only save the lives of fellow soldiers but being key to defeating the Germans in the battle.

Retired Lt. Harold Wigetman, a member of the 3rd Battalion, 7th Infantry, said that between the artillery strikes Conner called in and spray from his own machine gun, he killed at least 50 German soldiers and wounded twice as many.

“His heroic and entirely voluntary act saved our battalion,” Wigetman wrote. “If he hadn’t done what he did, we would have had to fight for our lives.”